There isn’t any time to wonder about it now.

Throwing a clean sheet over the bed to hide the hideous mattress, my mother helps Elizabeth find a comfortable position, takes her hand, and mimics her breathing. “Sam, get a heating pad and fill some bottles with fresh water.”

Gratefully I creep out of the room, the sounds of Elizabeth’s moans chasing me out, down the stairs. I pad about on deft, silent feet, trying not to make a sound, and when I fly down the stairs, I leap catlike over the steps I know would complain. I feel like a ghost, able to leap and hurry from place to place with utter silence. On the dining room floor, I find a discarded cork, and I put it in my pocket for good luck. It is still faintly purple with wine, and I think this will have to do. I haven’t any time to find a better charm. It soaks up the stain like it will hopefully soak up other invisible toxins floating on the air.

I will have to go into the kitchen to fill the bottles, but a terrible foreboding has filled me. All is quiet now. Has Don given up shouting for us? I feel an urgent need to make sure my knots are still secure, that they aren’t starting to come loose, that Don isn’t sawing away at the last fraying threads of rope. I step quietly up to the doorway and peer inside.

The chair is empty. The ropes are unwound snakes on the floor.

I back away from the doorway, panic rising in my throat, wondering where he has gone. He could be anywhere in the house. I could turn around and find him just behind me; he might be waiting on the stairs; he might be just behind a door, ready to reach out and grab me as I pass.

Quickly as I can, I find some bottles to fill from the tap and fly like a bird back up the stairs, oddly grateful now for the sanctuary of the locked room. The door clicks behind me, and in the flickering candlelight, Elizabeth screams.

It goes on for hours.

My mother keeps track of dilation while I allow Elizabeth to clutch my hand, squeezing it so tightly when the contractions come on hard and fast and strong that I fear she might crack my bones in her fist. Her face shines with sweat in the candles’ glow, and her hair is plastered to her face.

“Get him out, get him out,” she sobs when the pain comes on.

I have never seen her like this before. She is like a force of nature, like a storm, and all the energy in the room is concentrated around her; she is a great planet so dense that it bends space-time around it; her womb is a locked room, but it is about to unlock.

“Water,” she gasps, so I pour small sips of water into her mouth until she pushes me away agitatedly. “Why is it so hot?”